What???  No PFM?  No Gong?  No Camel?  Hehe...

Rbh
Bit - If you haven't heard an older band called " Happy the Man" . I think they might intrigue you.

Thanks for the reminder, Rbh. Although somewhat familiar with the band, I hadn't listened to them in a long while. Found 'em on YouTube and made it my morning soundtrack. Inspiring stuff. Reminds me of another of my faves of the era, Renaissance.
 
Another of my favorites of that period was a band out of Toronto called Klaatu. Here's a tune later covered by the Carpenters:

But their best effort was a Beatle-esque concept album named Hope. 

 
 
 
 
 

My friend Dave pointed me at this Bill Bruford talk, given at Malmo university:
 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EJd59a47ewY
 
Great stuff, if you like drumming, YES, Bill Bruford or...interesting talks.

craigb

bitflipper
Tangent: while searching for someplace that might have archived these interviews (they were apparently offered for sale at one time), I ran across this quote from Wakeman:
 

I learned an invaluable lesson from a kid in Argentina when we were playing Buenos Aires in 2002. I came out of the hotel and this 16-year-old-boy asked me to sign his copy of my Six Wives of Henry VIII album. As I was signing it I asked him ‘what does a 16 year-old like about this old music?’ and he looked at me, quite hurt, and said, ‘it might be old to you, Mr Wakeman, but I only heard it for the first time last week. When you hear something for the first time, it’s new.’ I’ve never forgotten that.

 
This was in the context of an article about Rick's top 10 prog albums of all time. In the Court of the Crimson King tops his list, as it would my own. I would have included Six Wives.
 
In the Court of the Crimson King
Vanilla Fudge
The Wall
The Origin of Symmetry (Muse)
Shades of Deep Purple
Nursery Crime - Genesis
Battersea Power Station  (Junior's Eyes, their only album)
Ozzmosis (Ozzy Osbourne) (Wakeman played on this album)
Yes (the first album, also one my faves)
Tarkus (oh, yeh!)

 
Hmm... An interesting top 10 list considering who its coming from!  I'm not even sure if I could come up with a top 10, but I'm betting it would be a bit more obscure (i.e., less mainstream, like Djam Karet, etc., etc.).  There's just so much really good prog out there!  Heck, there are even other albums from the bands listed that I might put higher, like Red over In the Court of the Crimson King, or a Lamb Lies Down On Broadway over Nursery Crimes...  The Wall isn't a big favorite of mine either.  I can think of several other PF albums I prefer far more.  Now that Junior's Eyes album, I'll have to listen to again maybe later today - it's been a long time for that one (weren't they Bowie's backing band?).
 
Heh, if "I" think this list is too mainstream, I can only imagine what Pedro's going to say!  TL;DR??? 

I'd have to say;
 
Van Der Graf Generator - Still Life
Gentle Giant - Freehand
Big Big Train - The Underfall Yard
Genesis - Selling England by The Pound
Marillion - Brave
King Crimson - Discipline
Peter Gabriel - 4
PFM - Chocolate Kings
Wishbone Ash - Argus
 
Oh..and...
 
Headscape - Weirdstone

jamesg1213
I'd have to say;
 
Van Der Graf Generator - Still Life
Gentle Giant - Freehand
Big Big Train - The Underfall Yard
Genesis - Selling England by The Pound
Marillion - Brave
King Crimson - Discipline
Peter Gabriel - 4
PFM - Chocolate Kings
Wishbone Ash - Argus
 
Oh..and...
 
Headscape - Weirdstone

Well, my list, for today - tomorrow it will be different.

• King Crimson - In the Court of the Crimson King
• Strawbs - Grave New World
• ELP - Tarkus
• Yes - Tales from Topographic Oceans
• Genesis - Selling England By the Pound
• Big Big Train - English Electric
• Steven Wilson - Hand.Cannot.Erase
• Pink Floyd - Wish You Were Here
• Mostly Autumn - Dressed in Voices.
• Supertramp - Crime of the Century

 
 

Hawkwind prog? I wouldn't have said so myself. Psychedelia yes, space-rock definitely, but "prog" no. Nor Peter Gabriel's post-Genesis work.

But if Hawkwind and Peter Gabriel count as "prog" then from the 70s Neu! and Can deserve to be somewhere up there with the currently UK/US centred suggested lists. As perhaps do Kraftwerk. And there's more than a few more recent bands that never had a big label's push behind them once taste and the record market began to diversify in the 1980s. Now there seem to be as many genres as there are bands, with a new genre being created every time a band splits.

But what do I know? I was in my late teens in the late 1970s and wearing gold capes with 8" platforms was getting a little dated by then.:-)

Hawkwind and Gabriel though, no problem. Though thinking back, most of the people of my age I know who were into the earlier 70s technoflash big-budget Spinal Tap prog stuff usually disliked both of them.

Edit-

In the spirit of things....
Not a "best of all time" list, that would go on for ever, but well worth a listen -
Pink Floyd - Piper at the Gates of Dawn
Hawkwind - The Business Trip Live and Quark Strangeness and Charm.
System 7/ Mirror System - Seventh Wave and N+X
For Neu! and Can there are several good anthologies about.

I'm liking all of the above lists. 
 
Plus I believe I have every album mentioned with the possible exception of System 7/ Mirror System - Seventh Wave and N+X, though I'm not sure (and the hard drive it's on isn't accessible until I work on my PC and reboot).

craigb
I'm liking all of the above lists. 
 
Plus I believe I have every album mentioned with the possible exception of System 7/ Mirror System - Seventh Wave and N+X, though I'm not sure (and the hard drive it's on isn't accessible until I work on my PC and reboot).

Seventh Wave's both albums are fabulous ... totally great!

tlw
Hawkwind prog? I wouldn't have said so myself. Psychedelia yes, space-rock definitely, but "prog" no. Nor Peter Gabriel's post-Genesis work.

Prog, as a genre, or progressive music??
I can't recall "prog" as a genre until quite recently, in the 70's progressive music refered to almost anything experimental, different (i.e. progressive) It could be argured that much of the stuff released now in the "prog" genre is in fact regressive.
 
Of course not content to categorise things as just “Prog” someone with far too much time on their hands has come up with innumerable sub-genres of which this list is a small part.
 
I think, should you wish to, you could catagorise Gabriel's post Genesis work as "crossover prog" 
 
I read one review saying that Luna Rossa were not “Prog” but it was genre deifying, drawing on elements of jazz, folk, rock and classical. To me that is progressive.
 

I try to both categorize all of the songs I have, but not get caught up in the whole naming game.  My goal is to simply group music by songs that sound good together.  Then, if I really wanted to completely mix styles, it would be my choice not the default.  I tend to listen to styles/genres/subgenres/etc. based on whatever mood I happen to be in and I have a LOT of different things to choose from!  In many cases, without shuffle-playing a subsection of my music, I have found that I would have completely missed out on stuff that's really good but obscure.  Quite often I'll have to look to see what's playing when I hear something I'm not familiar with that sounds good.
 
So, when I refer to something as "Prog," it typically means music that is labelled as such in general by most people. I don't get into the debates and arguments about whether a certain artist is "Progressive" or not (heck, Beethoven could be argued to have been progressive at his time!).
 
Most people with smaller song collections also tend to stick with a relatively small area of music that they prefer.  I have at least 250,000 songs that are all over the place: Classical, New Wave, New Age, Progressive, Rock (in many, many forms), Metal (also in many forms), Electonic (Trance, Techno, Ambient, House, etc., etc., etc.), Psychedelic, Punk, Ska, Reggae, Latin, Celtic, Dance, Pop, Soul, Funk, Folk, World, R&B, Industrial and lots of kinds of Jazz.  Heck, I even have too much inherited music like Easy Listening and Big Band.  My hard drive with the media player is currently down so I can't check these, but I'm sure I've even missed one or two.
 
Some of those subgenres I'm rarely in the mood for, others I can listen to every day.  I really don't want them all mixed together!